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Monday, May 21, 2018

fms March 2018

With Regard to the Best in All
Faridabad Majdoor Samachar
FMS#357 || Faridabad-NCR || March 2018

Tell me something. Why do you keep repeating that a “worker” doesn’t understand this, won’t follow that, has no interest in the first page, can’t do this, wouldn’t do that, works against own interest?

I too hear you say this all the time. It makes me want to ask you who this “worker” is.

You both sound like you want to pick a fight with me. By “worker” I don’t mean any one person; I am talking about a general lack of understanding. I call them workers who are not able to grasp complexities.

So then according to you, when many “workers” stop work together in the middle of the day, they do so because of a lack of understanding? Is it because of an inability to grasp complexity and with no understanding of how things will unfold?

No. I’ve been part many such milieus myself. In these moments a lot is at stake, so naiveté is not an option. But things are different in the routine of living and working.

So then according to you, thought is an outcome of stakes. The higher the stakes, the better the thought; you lower the stakes, and thought vanishes.

I feel we stay quiet about the inner stakes we have about life. They remain inaudible. Own stakes are hidden, others’ stakes are screened. All that remains, all that gets sung, is who’s high, who’s less.

The two of you have taken my words into some unwarranted directions. Like it happens every time I try to talk to someone, here too I am failing.

Don’t be frustrated. This debate is old. If we set the bar low for each other, then that is what we’ll see and what we’ll find. On the other hand, if I were to look at her and think, this is someone who has the capacity to draw the experiences of a hundred workplaces from twenty-five people, and who can express experiences of as many as ten workplaces at a time to twenty-five people in exceptional ways, and who reads fat books, then I will not be able to think of her as naive. I mean, if I still do, then it would be my own naiveté.

I want to add another dimension to this conversation. The “worker” you speak of today has nothing to do with labour courts. Today managements take all disputes to the criminal court. Some thousands are in jail from not having been granted bail. So many are in jail following absurd legal judgements. Is this because they are emitting naiveté?

I want to add something as well — All those entering the world of work today have dexterity with language, technology, forms of conversation. They have an agility both with making groups, and with becoming part of groups.

Let me also add something — You only need to read crime reports in newspapers, or news about boys and girls who elope to see how even reporters think of young workers as being highly intelligent and courageous. It is when they don’t understand a situation or an event, that they sense intelligence and courage.

That is so true. When one doesn’t understand something, instead of admonishing and ridiculing, appreciate the mystery, allow the attraction, praise the intelligence and courage, and view the other person with equality.

All of you seem to be suggesting that my thoughts run counter to my experience.

By falling in with the routine divide — where the commonplace is considered very low, and anything out of the ordinary is thought worthy of hyperboles — we suspend each other in limbo land.

It would be good practice to give thought velocity by paying attention to, and giving regard to, the best of an individual or a collective, gathering, or group.